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Файл:Collected Short Stories V
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COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • V
‘Teenth Street, third fl oor rear hall room. He was twenty years
and four months old, and he worked in a cameras-of-all-kinds,
photographic supplies and fi lms-developed store. I don’t know
what kind of work he did in the store; but you must have seen
him. He is the young man who always comes behind the counter to waIt on you and lets you talk for fi ve minutes, telling
him what you want. When you are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of his voice to waIt on you, and walks away
whistling between his teeth.
I don’t want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but, if you are a man reader, I will say that Stickncy
looked precisely like the young chap that you always fi nd sitting in your chair smoking a cigarette after you have missed
a shot while playing pool – not billiards but pool – when you
want to sIt down yourself.
There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy
essence. Of course, prosperous people and comfortable people
who have homes or fl ats or rooms with meals, and even people
who live in apartment houses with hotel service get something
of the Christmas fl avor. They give one another presents with
the cost mark scratched off with a penknife; and they hang
holly wreaths in the front windows and when they are asked
whether they prefer light or dark meat from the turkey they
say: “Both, please,” and giggle and have lots of fun. And the
very poorest people have the best time of it. The Army gives
‘em a dinner, and the 10 a. m. issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the largest circulation in the city
leaves a basket at their door full of an apple, a Lake Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant and a bunch of Kalamazoo
41
O. HENRY
bleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does
for you.
But, I’ll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems
to be only the day before the twenty-sixth day of December.
It’s the chap in the big city earning sixteen dollars a week,
with no friends and few acquaintances, who fi nds himself with
only fi fty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve. He can’t accept
charity; he can’t borrow; he knows no one who would invite
him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the shepherds left
their fl ocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning
the sheep business. So they said to him, “Bobby, we’re going
to investigate this star route and see what’s in it. If It should
turn out to be the fi rst Christmas day we don’t want to miss it.
And, as you are not a wise man, and as you couldn’t possibly
purchase a present to take along, suppose you stay behind and
mind the sheep.”
So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant
of the shepherd who was left behind to take care of the fl ocks.
Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45. He
had a habIt of forgetting his latchkey.
Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon,
clutching her sacque together at the throat and gorgonizing
him with her opaque, yellow eyes.
(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story.
Once a roomer in 47 who had the Scotch habit – not kilts,
but a habIt of drinking Scotch – began to fi gure to himself
what might happen if two persons should ring the doorbells
of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of two halves of Mrs.
42
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • V
Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at the two
entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, fl apping sacque
that could never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue got him.)
“Evening,” said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little
piles of muddy slush along the hall matting. “Think we’ll have
snow?”
“You left your key,” said – [Here the manuscript ends.]
THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT
I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men.
Singly, they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now and then It happens that all of them
will pitch upon the same printworthy incident of the passing
earthly panorama and will send in reportorial constructions
thereof to their respective journals. It is then that, for me, It is
to laugh. For It seems that to each of them, trained and skilled
as he may be, the same occurrence presents a different facet of
the cut diamond, life.
One will have It (let us say) that Mme. André Macarté’s
apartment was looted by six burglars, who descended via the
fi re-escape and bore away a ruby tiara valued at two thousand
dollars and a fi ve-hundred-dollar prize Spitz dog, which (in
violation of the expectoration ordinance) was making free
with the halls of the Wuttapesituckquesunoowetunquah
Apartments.
My second “chiel” will take notes to the effect that while
a friendly game of pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. Andy McCarty, a lady guest named Ruby
O’Hara threw a burglar down six fl ights of stairs, where he was
pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dollar English bulldog
amid a crowd of fi ve hundred excited spectators.
44
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • V
My third chronicler and friend will gather the news threads
of the happening in his own happy way; setting forth on the
page for you to read that the house of Antonio MacartinI was
blown up at 6 a. m., by the Black Hand Society, on his refusing
to leave two thousand dollars at a certain street corner, killing
a pet fi ve-hundred-dollar Pomeranian belonging to Alderman
Rubitara’s little daughter (see photo and diagram opposite).
Number four of my history-makers will simply construe
from the premises the story that while an audience of two
thousand enthusiasts was listening to a Rubinstein concert on
Sixth Street, a woman who said she was Mrs. Andrew M. Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass window valued at fi ve
hundred dollars. The Carter woman claimed that some one in
the building had stolen her dog.
Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day’s
doings need do no one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough
for any man to prop against his morning water-bottle to fend
off the smiling hatred of his wife’s glance. If he be foolish
enough to read four he is no wiser than a Higher Critic.
I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the
parable of the talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey
into a far country, fi rst hands over to his servants his goods. To
one he gives fi ve talents; to another two; to another one – to
every man according to his several ability, as the text has it.
There are two versions of this parable, as you well know. There
may be more – I do not know.
When the p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put their talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good. The unprofi table one simply digs up the
45
O. HENRY
talent deposited with him and hands It out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks, surely! In one
version we read that he had wrapped It in a napkin and laid
It away. But the commentator informs us that the talent mentioned was composed of 750 ounces of silver – about $900
worth. So the chronicler who mentioned the napkin, had either to reduce the amount of the deposIt or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery used in those davs. Therefore
in his version we note that he uses the word “pound” instead
of “talent.”
A pound of silver may very well be laid away – and carried
away – in a napkin, as any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.
But let us get away from our mutton.
When the returned nobleman fi nds that the one-talented
servant has nothing to hand over except the original fund
entrusted to him, he is as angry as a multi-millionaire would
be if some one should hide under his bed and make a noise
like an assessment. He orders the unprofi table servant cast
into outer darkness, after fi rst taking away his talent and giving It to the one-hundred-per cent. fi nancier, and breathing
strange saws, saying: “From him that hath not shall be taken
away even that which he hath.” Which is the same as to say:
“Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”
And now closer draw the threads of parable, precept allegory, and narrative, leading nowhere if you will, or else
weaving themselves into the little fi ction story about Cliff
McGowan and his one talent. There is but a defi nition to follow; and then the homely actors trip on.
46
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • V
Talent: A gift, endowment or faculty; some peculiar ability,
power, or accomplishment, natural or acquired. (A metaphor
borrowed from the parable in Matt. XXV. 14-30.)
In New York City to-day there are (estimated) 125,000 living creatures training for the stage. This does not include seals,
pigs, dogs, elephants, prize-fi ghters, Carmens, mind-readers,
or Japanese wrestlers. The bulk of them are in the ranks of the
Four Million. Out of this number will survive a thousand.
Nine hundred of these will have attained their fulness of
fame when they shall dubiously indicate with the point of
a hatpin a blurred fi gure in a fl ashlight photograph of a stage
tout ensemble with the proud commentary: “That’s me.”
Eighty, in the pinkest of (male) Louis XIV court costumes,
shall welcome the Queen of the (mythical) Pawpaw Isles in
a few well-memorized words, turning a tip-tilted nose upon
the nine hundred.
Ten, in tiny lace caps, shall dust Ibsen furniture for six
minutes after the rising of the curtain.
Nine shall attain the circuits, besieging with muscle, skill,
eye, hand, voice, wit, brain, heel and toe the ultimate high
walls of stardom.
One shall inherIt Broadway. Sic venIt gloria mundi.
Cliff McGowan and Mac McGowan were cousins. They
lived on the West Side and were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle riding, boxing, German and Irish dialect
comedy, and a little sleight-of-hand and balancing of wheat
straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of their chins came as
easy to them as It is for you to fi x your rat so It won’t show or to
dodge a creditor through the swinging-doors of a well-lighted
47
O. HENRY
café – according as you may belong to the one or the other division of the greatest prestidigitators – the people. They were
slim, pale, consummately self-possessed youths, whose fi ngernails were always irreproachably (and clothes seams reproachfully) shiny. Their conversation was in sentences so short that
they made Kipling’s seem as long as court citations.
Having the temperament, they did no work. Any afternoon
you could fi nd them on Eighth Avenue either in front of Spinelli’s barber shop, Mike Dugan’s place, or the Limerick Hotel,
rubbing their forefi nger nails with dingy silk handkerchiefs.
At any time, if you had happened to be standing, undecisive,
near a pool-table, and Cliff and Mac had, casually, as It were,
drawn near, mentioning something disinterestedly, about
a game, well, indeed, would It have been for you had you gone
your way, unresponsive. Which assertion, carefully considered, is a study in tense, punctuation, and advice to strangers.
Of all kinships It is likely that the closest is that of cousin.
Between cousins there exist the ties of race, name, and favor –
ties thicker than water, and yet not coagulated with the jealous
precipitations of brotherhood or the enjoining obligations of
the matrimonial yoke. You can bestow upon a cousin almost
the interest and affection that you would give to a stranger;
you need not feel toward him the contempt and embarrassment that you have for one of your father’s sons – It is the
closer clan-feeling that sometimes makes the branch of a tree
stronger than its trunk.
Thus were the two McGowans bonded. They enjoyed a quiet celebrity in their district, which was a strip west of Eighth
Avenue with the Pump for its pivot. Their talents were praised
48
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • V
in a hundred “joints”; their friendship was famed even in
a neighborhood where men had been known to fi ght off the
wives of their friends – when domestic onslaught was being
made upon their friends by the wives of their friends. (Thus do
the limitations of English force us to repetends.)
So, side by side, grim, sallow, lowering, inseparable, undefeated, the cousins fought their way into the temple of Art – art
with a big A, which causes to intervene a lesson in geometry.
One night at about eleven o’clock Del Delano dropped
into Mike’s place on Eighth Avenue. From that moment, instead of remaining a Place, the café became a Resort. It was as
though King Edward had condescended to mingle with tenspots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casually strolled in
to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England,
had accepted an invitation to read selections from “Rena, the
Snow-bird” at an unveiling of the proposed monument to
James Owen O’Connor at Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi. In
spite of these comparisons, you will have to be told why the
patronizing of a third-rate saloon on the West Side by the said
Del Delano conferred such a specifi c honor upon the place.
Del Delano could not make his feet behave; and so the
world paid him $300 a week to see them misconduct themselves on the vaudeville stage. To make the matter plain to
you (and to swell the number of words), he was the best fancy dancer on any of the circuits between Ottawa and Corpus
Christi. With his eyes fi xed on vacancy and his feet apparently fi xed on nothing, he “nightly charmed thousands,” as his
press-agent incorrectly stated. Even taking night performance
and matinée together, he scarcely could have charmed more
49
O. HENRY
than eighteen hundred, including those who left after Zora,
the Nautch girl, had squeezed herself through a hoop twelve
inches in diameter, and those who were waiting for the moving pictures.
But Del Delano was the West Side’s favorite; and nowhere
is there a more loyal Side. Five years before our story was submitted to the editors, Del had crawled from some Tenth Avenue basement like a lean rat and had bitten his way into the
Big Cheese. Patched, half-starved, cuffl ess, and as scornful of
the Hook as an interpreter of Ibsen, he had danced his way
into health (as you and I view it) and fame in sixteen minutes
on Amateur Night at Creary’s (Variety) Theatre in Eighth Avenue. A bookmaker (one of the kind that talent wins with
instead of losing) sat in the audience, asleep, dreaming of an
impossible pick-up among the amateurs. After a snore, a glass
of beer from the handsome waiter, and a temporary blindness
caused by the diamonds of a transmontane blonde in Box E,
the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano
for a three-weeks’ trial engagement fused with a trained-dog
short-circuIt covering the three Washingtons – Heights,
Statue, and Square.
By the time this story was read and accepted, Del Delano
was drawing his three-hundred dollars a week, which, divided by seven (Sunday acts not in costume being permissible),
dispels the delusion entertained by most of us that we have
seen better days. You can easily imagine the worshipful agitation of Eighth Avenue whenever Del Delano honored It with
a visIt after his terpsichorean act in a historically great and
vilely ventilated Broadway theatre. If the West Side could
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